Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines

Podcasting has been growing at a phenomenal pace over the last few years, with ad revenues expected to reach over $220 Million in 2017, an 85 percent increase from 2016, according to the IAB Podcast Advertising Revenue Study conducted by PwC US. Podcast listeners are highly engaged, which makes them an appealing target for marketers. However, there have been a number of challenges in getting a commonly agreed-upon set of metrics in the podcasting space. This is in part due to the lack of access to client side measurement, but also largely due to podcasting being a relatively new space that has been innovating over the past few years.

The IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines 2.0* are the result of the Podcast Technical Working Group’s efforts to provide clarity in the marketplace by developing a common language around measurement. The focus of this document is on server side measurement (but will be extended to client side measurement once the client side opens up). In addition to defining standard metrics for both podcast content and podcast ads, this document also provides guidance on some of the technical details such as request filtering, in order to reduce the discrepancies currently seen across podcast publishers and tech vendors. *This document was updated on December 20th, 2017, with a correction around the reference to MRC coverage of Podcasts.